


One Colt

by BobRussellFan



Category: Star Trek, Star Trek: Discovery, Star Trek: The Original Series
Genre: fixfic, little spooky but I think not too bad, this is a nice one
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-02-14
Updated: 2020-02-14
Packaged: 2021-02-19 04:54:42
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,246
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22705420
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/BobRussellFan/pseuds/BobRussellFan
Summary: Not long before Season 2 of Discovery, Spock saves Yeoman Colt - at a cost.
Kudos: 7





	One Colt

**Author's Note:**

> This one popped into my head - enjoy! I know the Discovery character was an homage to the Cage character, but then I started thinking...

“Remember who you are.” 

The voice in its head grows louder - and its Other pushes back against the walls of the egg-self. 

“REMEMBER WHO YOU ARE.” 

They are taking shape now. The inquisitor is tall and pale, a patch of dark fiber on its head, wrapped in a blue and black sheath. 

The reptile struggles still as the inquisitor takes it to a time before its own birth. A time of pain and terror, of begging for help that never came - 

“REMEMBER!” The inquisitor grabs the reptile with both hands and rips its skin asunder. There is a terrible wailing - and suddenly Yeoman J.M. Colt is standing in a dark reflection of her quarters, looking up at the science officer of the USS Enterprise. 

“Oh God! Oh my god, Mr. Spock!” She hugs him but he grips her about the upper arms and holds her tightly. 

“Colt!” he demands, more fire than she’s ever heard in his speaking voice. She knows somehow this is a mind meld, something she’s read about in school but never actually seen herself. A Vulcan mind meld. “Have you seen it!?” 

She looks up at him and knows what he’s talking about - and at the same time, knows she doesn’t. “N-no?” There are sounds around her, a whispering skittering of reptiles in the darkness of her quarters, and she’s terrified. He looks down at her, and his gaunt face changes. 

“Yeoman, forgive me. I am...not myself.” His dark eyebrows furrow together, and the noise around them seems to fade. “Do you remember what happened?” 

“I...yes.” Colt swallows hard, looking down at the pale pink backs of her hands. “I remember the away mission. The Thuban system.” 

“Yes. Investigating the fate of the civilization on Thuban IV. Do you remember the underground system?” 

“I...yes.” She remembers Number One’s cool regard, Spock’s raised eyebrow, and how suddenly her decision to stay on the surface seeming like the dumbest thing she’d ever pulled. ‘I was...I was afraid to go below,” she said, “because of…” 

“Because of Talos IV,” agrees Spock. “You were afraid to go below because you remembered being caged on Talos IV.” It had only been a few years earlier but it was quite the beginning for a young spacer. She'd heard Pike confess to Number One once that he wondered sometimes if he'd ever really left that planet. Now she knew exactly what he'd meant... 

“So I stayed with the equipment to stay in contact with the Enterprise. But that’s when those…” She twitches slightly in his grip, remembering the things - and there’s that skittering and slithering in the darkness again, knowing they’re coming close. “Those _things_.” 

“The last inhabitants of Thuban IV,” says Spock, sorrow in his deep voice as he looks down at her, and something in his tone once again chases away the sounds around them. “They attempted to alter their genome with DNA from a reptilian species on their planet. But instead they turned themselves into...hybrids. Savage, cunning, predatory, and able to infect others with a bite.” 

Colt shivers all over, and only Spock’s proximity keeps her from fleeing into the darkness. “I remember. I killed one with my laser, then two more took me from behind and - I couldn’t move, and it was like the venom was crawling inside my skin. And then I must have started…” She looks down at the backs of her hands again and sees them - red, scaly, marked. “But it wasn’t a hallucination, was it?” 

“No,” says Spock sorrowfully. “By the time we had emerged from the security vault below, the reptiles had already taken you and fled. Once we realized how the creatures reproduced, the sensors could be adjusted to find you - “ She has a flash, then, of Spock’s memories - frantic adjustments to the sensors, personally leading the landing party below, blasting away at the reptile colony with a laser rifle before realizing that the reptile in the tattered uniform had to be her - 

At the memory of her own face in Spock’s mind, Colt _screams_ - but then feels his hands on the side of her face, her real face, for a moment. “Remember who you are!” he says firmly. “You are Crewman Jane Mia Colt. A talented young woman, a nurse in training, popular with those who know you - a _friend_, Mia.” 

Spock looks down at Colt and in the connection of a mind-meld can hold her against the darkness outside as he would never have in the insubstantial world that is reality outside the mind. She looks up at him and says, “Will they...will they be able to fix me?” she asks. 

In the honesty of a mind meld, Spock can tell her only - “The future is uncertain. What matters is that your mind is unbroken. And the mind can be...the mind can be master of the body.” He says it to her but she realizes that she is saying it to himself too. “And master of itself.” 

Through their connection, she hears the words of a Vulcan sage and says with him. “With proper discipline, anything’s possible.” Her quarters are as bright as day now. There are no monsters here. 

“Are you ready to leave?” he asks her. 

She considers, nods, and says, “Yes.” 

-

Hours later, Yeoman Mia Colt is in a private room off Sickbay, the lights turned down to near blackness. She likes it better this way; she can’t see herself except as a glowing outline of infrared patterns. Someday, perhaps, she’ll be able to appreciate infrared vision, enhanced olfactory senses, and all the rest. 

Right now she’s reading an article on her reader about a condition she’d never heard of before, a condition that on Earth these days is (depending on patient preference) easily treated with childhood surgery and drugs. 

Dysmorphia. 

The reading (and the drugs still in her system) keeps her from crying, which is good because her eyes don’t seem to do that anymore. When there’s a chime at the door, she looks up and says “...Who?” her own raspy voice is still a shock in her ears. When she hears Spock’s name, she says “Yes,” and he enters. 

He’s all business now - his hands folded behind his back, cool but not unsympathetic reserve. He has the grace to step in out of the light outside, door hissing shut behind him. The light of the screen reader is enough for a Vulcan. “I came to speak with you...Mia.” 

She gestures slightly, then hisses, “Not sure how much I’ll remember. Lot of sedatives…” The noise she makes was once a laugh. 

“Then I will be brief. I came to thank you.” 

She thinks, hard, past the haze of the end of her old life, the beginning of a new one, and all the reptilian sedatives in her system. “I couldn’t help you.” She hisses. “I haven’t seen...that thing.” She doesn’t have the words for it; not today. 

“Put it from your mind,” he asks her softly. “I will be...taking a medical leave for a time. Thanks to you. As you reminded me, a strong enough mind can overcome any obstacle. With the proper discipline.” 

“I’m sorry I couldn’t help you with your nightmares, Mr. Spock,” says Colt. “But you were able to save me from mine.” As he leaves, she gives him the Vulcan salute - the first time she’s ever been able to make her fingers do that. 

Maybe there’s hope yet…


End file.
